Category: Uncategorized

How the world really works

This interview is two and a half hours long, but it’s worth listening to every minute. It completely blew my mind, and connected a bunch of things I’ve been wondering about—not in a conspiratorial way, where everything has an explanation, but in a way that makes pragmatic sense while also opening up to tons of other questions.

The TL;DW version is this: our world operates a lot like the world of the Dresden Files, with a secret history and world that is invisible to most of the mundane normies. But instead of magic, the hidden world runs on money, power, and influence. And instead of factions like the Fey, the white/red/black vampire courts, or the Denarians, the primary factions are the MIC (military industrial complex), the FIC (financial industrial complex), and the TIC (technology industrial complex). And China, which is the only major nation state that hasn’t been brought under the control of the FIC, TIC, or MIC, thanks to the iron fisted rule of the CCP.

But just like the magical world of the Dresden Files lives in fear that the mundane normies will wake up and turn on them, the people who run the world need to give the rest of us stories that will keep the masses happy and distracted, lest they rise up and ruin their ongoing machinations of power. Because even though any one of us has little to no power, as a group we have far more power than we know. Which is why they try to turn us on each other, with stuff like woke vs. MAGA, liberal vs. conservative, left vs. right, Evangelical vs. Muslim/Mormon/Catholic/whatever. It’s all fake. All divide and conquer.

The way to break the system is to remove their leverage over you. Pay off your mortgage, get out of debt, become self reliant etc. For businesses, it means to run a private company with no long-term debt or publicly traded stock, that runs a reliable profit without having to raise capital from outside sources. On the extreme end, you can opt out of the dollar entirely by going full crypto and moving to a jurisdiction where that isn’t against the law.

Under this view, what’s happening with the Iran War right now is a controlled demolition of the post-WWII world order, and the creation of a new one. Trump is an agent of the FIC, which wants to defeat the MIC by ending the endless wars and bringing peace to Western Asia (what the MIC has gotten us to call the “Middle East.”) Closing the Strait of Hormuz is the mechanism for accomplishing this, which is also in China’s interest, because the MIC is standing in the way of China’s Belt and Road initiative. Once they have destroyed the IRGC and brought Israel out from under the MIC (by ending foreign aid), the MIC will probably accept Ukraine as a consolation prize, turning that into a long-term conflict that will allow them to plunder Europe instead. The new world order will be much more stable, though the US will be much less powerful. But on the bright side, we avert WWIII.

At least, that’s what I got from it. Like I said, it’s a fascinating interview.

Is A Hill on Which to Die For You?

Is A Hill on Which to Die for you?

A Hill on Which to Die is a gritty, violent fantasy story about an aging orc war chief who must decide, again and again, which battles are worth fighting and which hills are worth dying on. It delivers a hard-edged tale of leadership, pride, survival, clan loyalty, and tragic decline, told from inside the brutal moral world of orcs rather than from the viewpoint of the heroes who usually fight them.

What Kind of Reader Will Love This Book?

If you like…

  • Dark, gritty fantasy told from the perspective of monsters, raiders, war chiefs, and morally brutal antiheroes
  • Orc-centered fantasy stories about clan politics, leadership challenges, duels, exile, survival, and tribal loyalty
  • David Gemmell-style heroic fantasy with raw violence, tragic masculinity, battlefield honor, and aging warriors facing their last stand
  • Stories where the central question is not “How do we defeat evil?” but “What is worth sacrificing everything for?”
  • Compact fantasy tales that feel like the seed of a larger epic world, with dwarven ruins, dragons, rival clans, and a rising Witch-King in the background

…then A Hill on Which to Die is probably your kind of story.

What You’ll Find Inside

A Hill on Which to Die follows Garak-Nur, an old orc war chief whose clan is threatened not by battlefield defeat, but by ambition, seduction, pride, and the promise of power from a rising Witch-King. As Garak leads his loyal followers into exile and tries to found the new Black Pine Clan, the story explores leadership under pressure, the cost of pride, the fragility of loyalty, and the brutal logic of a warrior culture built on strength. The result is a fast-moving, grim, muscular fantasy story with tragic weight, savage humor, and the feel of an orcish legend told around a fire.

What Makes It Different

Fans of David Gemmell will recognize the emphasis on aging warriors, violent honor, impossible choices, and the grim dignity of a fighter who knows his end is coming. But A Hill on Which to Die takes those heroic fantasy instincts in a darker and stranger direction by placing them inside an orc clan whose values are brutal, alien, and often horrifying. Where many fantasy stories use orcs as faceless enemies, this one makes an orc war chief the central figure and asks readers to understand his courage, failures, loyalties, and blind spots without pretending that he is good. It is not a clean redemption story; it is a tragic fantasy tale about leadership, decline, and the terrible difference between dying well and living too long in power.

What You Won’t Find

If you’re looking for noblebright fantasy, clean heroism, gentle adventure, or a traditional good-versus-evil quest, this probably isn’t that. This story contains brutal violence, savage orc culture, sexual content, and sexual violence, though it is not written as explicit romance or erotic fantasy. But if you want a grim, compact, character-driven fantasy story that takes monster culture seriously and uses it to explore power, pride, loyalty, and mortality, you’ll feel right at home.

Why I Think You Might Love It

The idea for this story came from a simple question: “Is this the hill on which you want to die?” That question became the spine of Garak-Nur’s entire journey. Every major choice he makes forces him to weigh pride against survival, strength against wisdom, and personal authority against the future of his clan. What makes the story linger is that Garak is not admirable in any simple sense, but he is vivid, forceful, and tragically understandable. He belongs to a violent world, and he cannot escape the logic of that world—but he can still choose where to stand, what to defend, and when the hill before him is finally the right one.

Where To Get It

Related Posts and Pages

Explore my other standalone books here.

Return to the book page for A Hill On Which To Die.

May Reading Recap

Books I Finished

The Infinity Machine by Sebastian Mallaby

Compassion vs. Guilt & Other Essays by Thomas Sowell

(Once again, Amazon demonstrates its racism by removing this title from its affiliate program because it was written by a black conservative!)

Riders of the Dawn by Louis L’Amour

Migrations & Cultures by Thomas Sowell

(Surprisingly, Amazon didn’t block this title from its affiliate program. It must not have threatened their ideological values as much as Sowell’s other titles.)

Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media by Jaron Lanier

After That, the Dark by Andrew Klavan

Literary Theory for Robots by Dennis Yi Tenen

The Broken Gun by Louis L’Amour

Manufacturing Delusion by Buck Sexton

The Made From Scratch Life by Melissa K. Norris

The Meaning of Your Life by Arthur C. Brooks

The Love Language That Matters Most by Gary Chapman and Les & Leslie Parrott

Utah Blaine by Louis L’Amour

Side note: they turned this one into a movie!

Books I DNFed

  • Searching for People and Places of the Bible by Great Courses
  • The Library by Andrew by Pettegree and Arthur der Weduwen
  • Your Second Draft by Alex Kourvo
  • Broken Country by Clare Leslie Hall
  • How I Dare by Janet Evanovich
  • The ADHD Field Guide for Adults by Cate Osborn and Erik Gude
  • Selling Sexy by Lauren Sherman and Chantal Fernandez
  • More Than Words by John Warner
  • Everyday Genius by Nelson Dellis
  • The Camp of the Saints by Jean Raspail

Heavy metal Beethoven

I’ve been on a bit of a Beethoven kick recently. His symphonies really are the best overall writing music out there. So when this crossed my feed, I had to check it out. It’s not the only heavy metal version of Moonlight Sonata I’ve seen, but I do think it’s the best.

How I Would Vote Now: 1968 Hugo Awards (Best Novel)

The Nominees

The Butterfly Kid by Chester Anderson

Chthon by Piers Anthony

The Einstein Intersection by Samuel R. Delany

Thorns by Robert Silverberg

Lord of Light by Robert Silverberg

The Actual Results

  1. Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny
  2. The Einstein Intersection by Samuel R. Delany
  3. Chthon by Piers Anthony
  • The Butterfly Kid by Chester Anderson
  • Thorns by Robert Silverberg

How I Would Have Voted

  1. No Award
  2. Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny

Explanation

I’m not a huge fan of New Wave science fiction, and by 1968, that was the hot new trend that was sweeping the genre. Of the five books nominated, I DNFed three and screened out the other two using AI. Here’s the breakdown:

I tried to read Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny, but just didn’t get into it. It was too Eastern and pseudo-mystical for me. With that said, it’s not a bad book, so I could probably be persuaded to go back and try it again. It’s just not for me.

Strangely, I’ve found that to be true of most of Zelazny’s books and stories… except for his Chronicles of Amber, which I love. Granted, the last couple books in the series are turning into a bit of a slog (I’m currently in the middle of book 9), but the first five books following Corwin are absolutely fantastic. I was hooked from the first page of the first book, unlike every other Zelazny title, which usually loses me after 30 or 40 pages.

The Butterfly Kid was really hard to find, because the Orem Public Library AND the BYU Library don’t carry it—and the BYU Library has one of the best science fiction collections west of the Mississippi. So I read the free sample on Amazon, and that was enough to DNF it. Way too psychadelic and trippy for me. The whole book is basically a 200 page drug trip, with an alien invasion thrown in for good measure. No wonder BYU doesn’t carry it.

The Einstein Connection was probably the book that made me decide to blacklist Samuel R. Delany and never read anything else he’s written (that, and the fact that he endorsed NAMBLA). There’s a lot of weird and twisted sexual content, including (if I remember correctly) some sexual content involving children. There’s a reason why Neil Gaiman wrote such a glowing introduction to the book, extolling all the reasons why he loves all things Delany. Bunch of sick perverts if you ask me.

I’ve tried to read some Piers Anthony before, but found it very difficult because of all the sick old man vibes he gives off. Which is a shame, because he’s a pretty decent writer. But everything I’ve tried to read of his has a weird obsession with rape, or of the necessity of women to submit to male sexual needs (including the needs of strangers). So when ChatGPT told me this about Chthon, I decided I didn’t need to read it:

This appears to include rape, incest/Oedipal sexual themes, coercive/abusive sexuality, and a race of women whose narrative function is tied to abuse, desire, and destructive obsession. Several reader reviews specifically warn about rape, incest, misogyny, and violence against women, with one review describing “cold scenes of both rape and incest” and objecting that the story seems to frame the perpetrating character too sympathetically.

The setup itself is grim: Aton Five is condemned to the subterranean prison planet Chthon after falling in love with a dangerous “Minionette,” and the novel is described by SFWA’s Nebula page as dark, grim, and heavily prison-sequence driven. The tone seems psychologically oppressive rather than hopeful or adventurous.

Robert Silverberg has a very similar problem, though he’s not nearly as overt in his sick old man vibes as Piers Anthony. But I don’t think I’ve ever read a Silverberg novel that I didn’t end up DNFing for weird and disturbing sexual content. Here’s what ChatGPT said about Thorns:

High concern. There is definitely sexual content, and it sounds deeply uncomfortable rather than erotic in an ordinary adult-romance sense. Multiple reader descriptions flag a bizarre or disturbing sex scene, and the central relationship involves a seventeen-year-old girl paired with a much older, physically altered man under manipulative circumstances.

I did not find evidence of a conventional rape scene in the sources I checked, but the book’s whole setup involves sexual/reproductive exploitation: Lona is used by scientists for her eggs, becomes the biological mother of one hundred children, and is then denied access to them. That is not “sexual violence” in the ordinary on-page assault sense, but it is very much reproductive exploitation and psychological violation.

This sounds like one of Silverberg’s darker psychological SF novels. The central figure, Duncan Chalk, literally feeds on other people’s suffering and engineers misery as entertainment. The book seems interested in pain, isolation, bodily alienation, emotional manipulation, and the public consumption of private suffering.

In fact, I’m pretty sure that ChatGPT flagged its own description of the novel as potentially violating its content guidelines, which is never a good sign.

So there you have it. Another bad year for science fiction—which tends to support my thesis that SFWA ruined the genre by starting it down the long march through the institutions. SFWA was founded in 1965, and Silverberg was the president from ’67 to ’68.

(As an interesting side note, every one of these novels had at least one edition featuring cover art with topless female nudity and visible nipples.)

How I Would Vote Now: All Years

Are Ben Shapiro and the Daily Wire crashing out?

I don’t usually pay any attention to the infighting among the various pundits and media personalities, even on my own side of the aisle, but as a former Daily Wire subscriber I found this very interesting. Not sure I totally agree with Malcolm & Simone on everything here, but they did share a very interesting perspective, especially as conservative influencers who (allegedly) got treated pretty dirty by Ben Shapiro as they were just getting started. If you follow any conservative media, you’ll probably find this interesting.

Daily Wire is an anti-Mormon channel now

About a week ago, the Daily Wire posted an article on their site titled “7 Reasons Joseph Smith Was a False Prophet” by Matt Fradd. This article was adapted from some exclusive content on Matt Fradd’s DW channel and released under the Daily Wire banner. Needless to say, it caused quit a commotion among DW’s Latter-day Saint subscribers.

This is not the first time the Daily Wire has shown a surprising degree of antipathy toward the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. About a year ago, Phil Cabot, one of DW’s producers, posted on his personal X account that Mormons aren’t Christians, and got into some heated online arguments about that. A couple months ago, shortly after Matt Fradd joined the Daily Wire as a host, he interviewed Joe Heschmeyer, an anti-Mormon who bizarrely argued that Mormonism is a “species of atheism.” And when the mass shooting at the church in Michigan happened last year, the Daily Wire’s coverage went out of the way to avoid using the full name of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, only editing the article after receiving backlash for it.

But all of these things were relatively minor. Phil Cabot is entitled to express his personal opinions on his own X feed. Matt Fradd can interview whoever he wants on his own show. And lots of news outlets fail to mention the full name of the church, intentionally and otherwise. However, this recent article—which was posted under the Daily Wire banner, not Matt Fradd’s channel—crosses the line. It demonstrates that the Daily Wire, as a company, has chosen to oppose the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and post openly anti-Mormon content. Which means that if you subscribe to the Daily Wire, your money will fund anti-Mormon content.

Andrew Klavan, my personal favorite Daily Wire host, took some heat for his take on the whole controversy. His response was basically “come on guys, can’t you take a joke?” Which is an incoherent thing to say, considering that the 7 Reasons article wasn’t intended as joke at all. But Klavan’s response makes sense when you realize he saw The Book of Mormon Musical over the weekend, and probably didn’t read Matt Fradd’s article at all. His explanation makes a lot more sense.

With that said, I didn’t cancel my family’s DW membership in a fit of outrage. I canceled it because the Daily Wire has clearly become an anti-Mormon channel, and I simply don’t want my money to fund that sort of content.

The question here for Latter-day Saints is this: is your religion more important to you than your politics, or do your politics come before your religion? This is the position the Daily Wire has placed us in. If you continue to keep your DW membership because you want to support their reporting and their conservative political activism—both of which are very good—know that you are doing so at the expense of your faith.

With all of that said, I actually don’t think it’s stupid of the Daily Wire to do this. With the collapse of the woke left and the ongoing cultural shift toward Christian revival, the next big fight in the culture wars is going to be a relitigation of all the old sectarian divisions within Christianity. Which means that the conservative Christian right is going to need a new enemy to hold them all together. The last time we had a major national revival, that enemy was the Catholics, which is how we ended up with Prohibition and immigration restrictions targeting (among other groups) the Irish and Italians. But all the Christian denominations hate the Mormons, partly out of how they see us as uniquely heretical, and partly because of how threatened they feel because of our church’s success.

The Daily Wire has been struggling a lot recently, and it appears that they are desperate to find a new brand of outrage bait to fill the hole that has been made by the collapse of the woke left. If it’s stupid of them to turn on the Mormons, it’s because they’re doing it too early. But ultimately, this is the cultural direction the conservative right is going to take. The Daily Wire is just ahead of the curve.

That’s why I canceled our DW membership. I encourage all my fellow members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to do the same.